The Israeli military offensive continues to focus this Monday in Yabalia, a city in the north of the Gaza Strip where troops have resumed their activity in the face of the return of Hamas.

In addition, his artillery extends through the central and east neighborhoods of Rafah, at the southern end of the enclave, which Israel ordered to be evacuated two days ago.

Some 360,000 people have already fled Rafah since the first evacuation order issued by the Israeli Army, according to estimates by the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).

“People don’t know where to go. Everyone in Rafah, even in the areas where the evacuation has not yet been ordered, is leaving. On the street, they ask each other what is the best place to get around,” a displaced gazati in the Tal al Sultan neighborhood, in the west of the city, told EFE.

In Rafah, “fear and confusion” reign, since people are reluctant to travel to what Israel has designated as a “humanitarian zone” for them, in the coastal area of Mawasi, where hundreds of thousands of people live crowded in makeshift shops on the beach, without drinking water or sanitation.

This Monday, the evacuation orders have been extended to two new areas of the center of the population, already more in the western half of the city, where humanitarian aid has not entered for almost a week since Israel keeps the steps of Kerem Shalom and Rafah closed, which connects the enclave with Egypt.

In the last few hours, at least eight people have died in the city, one of them minor, whose lifeless bodies arrived at the Kuwaiti hospital of the Rafah governorate.

“There is no place to go. There is no security to move without a ceasefire,” UNRWA claimed.

In Yabalia, the attacks have reached homes both in the refugee camp and in the city, where ambulance services rescued at least twenty bodies and treated dozens of wounded.

“The occupation forces attacked the ambulances in the Yabalia camp, where we could not reach a large number of victims,” denounced the director of emergency services in northern Gaza.

For its part, the official Palestinian agency Wafa, citing testimonies from residents, indicated that Israeli forces “surrounded and assaulted” the shelter centers, forcing hundreds of people to move west of the city.

“The Israeli forces try to advance towards the center of the field and shoot everything that moves around them, while the gifts fly intensely over the area at a low altitude,” he explained.

After ordering the evacuation of two large neighborhoods of Yabalia on Saturday, the Israeli Army resumed its military offensive on that city in northern Gaza on Sunday, one of the first places it attacked harshly in October when the war began.

“The occupation forces are now trying to besiege and break into the six shelter centers located to the east of the camp. There are shots with drones and snipers, forcing the displaced to leave without knowing where to go,” a resident of Yabalia explained to EFE by phone, who did not want to give his name for safety.

The same source also reported strong armed clashes between Palestinian militias and Israeli troops inside the camp, so the Israeli Army has had to ask for reinforcements.

As has happened with Zeitun, a neighborhood of Gaza City, Israeli forces have resumed their military activity in those parts of the northern Gaza Strip, by detecting – according to information from the intelligence services – that Hamas troops have returned to the area and are being regrouped.

The Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip since October 7 has caused the death of 35,034 citizens, most of them children and women, in adde of 78,755 injured and 10,000 missing people who are estimated to be trapped under the rubble.

In the last 24 hours, the Israel Air Force attacked 120 military targets from Hamas in the Gaza Strip, while its ground troops operate in Rafah, in the south, and in Zeitun and Yabalia, in the north, the Army reported.

The 162ndª Division fights in the east of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, where they say they killed several Hamas fighters, located and confiscated weapons found in a school and destroyed military infrastructure.

“The Air Force attacked several Hamas targets, including underground sites and a building where the agents met,” the Army said.

Meanwhile, the 99th Division maintains its offensive activity in Zeitun, a southern neighborhood of Gaza City where Hamas was also regrouping, and where troops today “roaned a weapons depot at the home of a Palestinian operational.”

A foreign United Nations employee died today in Rafah in an Israeli attack against a humanitarian convoy, the Government of Hamas in the Gaza Strip said on Monday.

“This afternoon, the Israeli occupation army killed a foreign employee and injured another foreign employee in Rafah (southern Gaza Strip), where they were attacked while traveling in a vehicle with the United Nations flag and the United Nations badge,” Gaza authorities said in a statement.

The UN confirmed on Monday that one of its employees died and another was injured in Gaza when the vehicle they were in was hit by a projectile, allegedly Israeli, while they were on their way to the European Hospital this morning.

The two victims, whose nationality has not been confirmed, worked for the Department of Security and Protection (DSS), according to a statement from the organization.

The UN spokesman, Farhan Haq, said that he could not even relet his nationality although “they are international personnel,” and said that the first thing will be to inform their families and governments.

“As part of their daily work, they go to different places to verify the safety conditions,” and in this case it was the European Hospital of Rafah, stressed Haq, who added that the vehicle in which he was traveling was duly identified as belonging to the United Nations fleet.

The secretary general called for “a complete investigation” into what happened, and said that he “condemns all attacks” against UN personnel.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing for a long war with Ukraine and the West, which would be due to his unexpected decision to replace his faithful Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, with an economist who will be in charge of modernizing the military industry.

“It is your right, if you want to (solve the crisis) on the battlefield, because it will be on the battlefield,” Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister, said on Monday, when speaking before the International Affairs Committee of the Russian Senate.

The information bomb that exploded on Sunday night had a greater impact because of the name of its substitute, the gray economist Andrei Belousov, in charge of the Government for the production of drones, an aspect in which Kiev has a clear advantage.

Belousov, whose candidacy will be endorsed on Tuesday by the Senate, will now have to manage a war economy with a defense budget of 6.7%, similar to that of the USSR in the last years of the Cold War.

Putin always defended the criticism of Shoigu, who was vilified by the absence of a clear strategy on the battlefield, especially since the campaign stalled in July 2022.

Shoigu, who in twelve years in office also led the military operation in Syria, played a very useful role for the Kremlin, since he served as a parapet against attacks by hawks such as the late founder of the Wagner company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who accused him of “criminal negligence.”

The Russian leader made changes in the generalate after the withdrawals of Kherson and Kharkov, and the armed rebellion of Prigozhin in June 2023, but had patience with Shoigu.

What he didn’t forgive was corruption. Shoigu’s right-hand man, Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov, was arrested on April 23 after being accused of large-scale corruption.

“The cleaning has begun in the Ministry of Defense, but it will continue,” said Sergey Mironov, a social democratic leader and friend of Prigozhin.

According to experts, since then the fate of the Minister of Defense was cast. He said goodbye when he directed the Victory Day military stop over Nazi Germany in the Red Square on May 9.

All Russia’s defense ministers since Putin arrived at the Kremlin in 2000 have been civilians, but Belousov was a more than unlikely candidate, since he has no military experience, according to the press.

In fact, in his first public appearance on Monday before the Senate defense and security committee, Belousov answered questions about the social problems faced by soldiers when they return from the front.

“He is a civilian, he is not a soldier. The military actions, the special military operation, the command, is directed by the General Staff under the command of the Supreme Commander. There is no change here, the work continues. No one should be worried,” said Valentina Matviyenko, president of the Senate.

It is an open secret that it is Putin and the Chief of Staff, Valeri Guerásimov, who set the military strategy and priorities on the battlefield.

The change in Defense coincides with the current Russian offensive in the Donbas and in the northeastern region of Kharkov, where Russian troops have opened a second front by conquering several Ukrainian localities.

Putin’s decision, a little friend of the purges within the government, adds to the surprising replacement of Nikolai Patrushev, one of the most influential figures in the hard core of the Kremlin.

Pátrushev, one of the ideologues of the narrative that Ukraine has no right to exist, ceased to be secretary of the Security Council, since he will now assume Shoigu.

The risk of technocrats like Belousov, not always supporters of the use of force, is compensated by their effective management of resources and their limited fondness for conspiracies, as happened with the generals who supported the Prigozhin uprising.

In fact, the new minister will have to strengthen the links between the Armed Forces and the defense industry, which will be the locomotive of the economy, since the victory in the war and the viability of social programs depends on it.

The weapons factories have hired more than half a million people “in just over a year,” as the new first deputy prime minister, Denis Manturov, admitted today.

According to the Russian press in exile and the Institute for the Study of War, everything indicates that Putin is preparing for a long military campaign that will require very careful management of state resources, as long as oil prices are above $60.

The new standards for applying for asylum announced this week by the United States Government arouse desolation among activists and migrants who wait in shelters or next to the Rio Bravo, on the northern border of Mexico.

Pastor Gigio Heredia, representative of the Humanitarian Hub Center in Ciudad Juárez, bordering El Paso, warned EFE that this measure will cause more and more migrants to cross irregularly through the Rio Bravo with the risks that this entails.

“We have seen it again and again, every time migrants arrive here with us we see that, encountering so many restrictions, seeing all the refusals to be able to get to the place where they thought since they left their places, it is a strong blow to the mood and especially to the dreams they had,” he said.

The activist referred to the rule promulgated by the Joe Biden Government to instruct migrant agents to prohibit people considered a “risk to public or national security” from applying for asylum and being, therefore, admitted within the United States, although the rule is still under review.

These filters are already applied when studying asylum cases, but this new measure allows them to be used during the “credible fear” interview phase, where it is decided if a person meets the requirements to request protection after crossing the border with Mexico.

The rule has consequences for border cities in Mexico, such as Ciudad Juárez, since “every decision made by the United States Government on the migration issue in one way or another has repercussions on the border, since this would close the door to many families who would have to stay,” according to Heredia.

The religious pointed out that, when faced with so many laws and restrictions, migrants go into despair. For this reason, they take riskier routes and expose themselves to organized crime.

“They are a prisoner for organized crime since they are vulnerable, we have had many cases where we have seen that their belongings have been stolen, where they have been outraged they have been threatened and that is a risk for them,” he said.

Likewise, he considered that “they would be forced to spend some time here and that would cause contingencies, a greater number of migrants stranded here at the border.”

The rules occur in the midst of growing operations to stop migrants in the United States and Mexico. In the first quarter of 2024, irregular migration intercepted by the Mexican Government grew by about 200% per year to almost 360,000.

Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador agreed at the end of April to “work together to immediately implement concrete measures in order to significantly reduce irregular border crossings and at the same time protect human rights.”

This already has effects on migrants such as Denis Ramos. A Guatemalan who has been waiting for four months in a hostel in Juárez for his appointment to enter the United States.

For him, the news of the tightening of the rules for applying for asylum is “very hard”.

“It is quite complicated for those of us who are already here, as well as for those who are on their way, because there are some who are not aware of the news and every day it gets a little more complicated,” the migrant told EFE.

He added that many travel companions are already desperate in the face of the difficulty of the journey, so they prefer to risk an irregular crossing.

“We who come from Guatemala, which is a neighboring country, feel that it is ‘very distant’ (too far away), let’s not say they come from Colombia, Venezuela, from different countries of the world. The course of the trip already brings them desperate and that leads them to surrender once and for all,” he said.